


Rash Decisions

by rellkelltn87



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Crying, Episode: s16e19 Granting Immunity, Episode: s16e23 Surrendering Noah, Fever, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 19:04:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19707544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rellkelltn87/pseuds/rellkelltn87
Summary: After the Trudy Malko trial, Barba contracts measles. Benson takes care of him. Every sickfic trope in the universe ensues.





	Rash Decisions

**Author's Note:**

> Very soft M for some sex things and cursing, and also a very swollen, um, big brass ego.

Rafael Barba was dancing with Olivia Benson in her living room, carefully shuffling around the coffee table to avoid accidental bruises to their shins. Noah was sound asleep in his crib at the back of the apartment. Benson placed her head on Barba’s shoulder, nuzzling her face into his neck. 

When she planted a kiss there, he hugged her tightly to him. They continued to sway. A cool wind from an open window chilled him, sending a shiver up his spine and through his limbs, but that was fine, since now her lips were on his and, turned on as he was by having Olivia Benson pressed flush against him, his heart was also flooding with joy, the sort of absolute, delightful joy that he hadn’t remembered experiencing in decades. 

She slid a hand between them and started to undo the buttons on his dress shirt. “I think,” she said, the gorgeous smirk of all his fantasies — especially since she’d promised they’d still be squabbling at 85 — on her face. 

“You _think_ ,” he said, returning the smirk, daring to kiss her jawline, to run his stubble across her skin there, to let his own hands wander lower than the small of her back.

“I think,” she repeated, “you and I should dance with fewer clothes on.”

“Yes,” was his answer as she wound her hands around his suspenders. “Yes,” he said again, this time against her lips, as she led him into the bedroom.

She unbuttoned her blouse and he bent to worshipfully pepper the top of her breasts with kisses. “Come on, Barba,” she prompted, unhooking her own bra. He reached out to palm one breast and leaned in to tease the other with his tongue. The sounds emitting from her throat made him twitch everywhere that mattered; when she begged, “touch me, Rafa,” he unbuttoned her pants and obliged, his fingers —

His fingers —

Another chill ran through him and all he could hear was an obnoxiously refitted taxi horn honking outside. Joy and heat quickly transformed into disappointment as he recognized the sensation of his desk calendar crinkling against his forehead.

His entire face throbbed as he slowly lifted it from the work he’d been doing. Trudy Malko, the Lower Manhattan self-important pseudomedical authority who’d conspired with a pediatrician to fake her son’s and other children’s vaccination records, leading to the measles outbreak at their high school that had sent Benson’s foster son to the hospital with measles-related pneumonia, was appealing her conviction. The state had agreed to hear the appeal, and since some state judges had been awfully friendly to Trudy Malko’s ilk lately, Barba worried about what an overturned conviction might mean for kids like Noah Porter. 

He didn’t know where that particular fierce protective impulse had come from. He clearly hadn’t learned it as a child or teenager, and probably hadn’t picked it up at Harvard Law either. He tried not to think about its source. 

He’d also failed a lot of people in the last ten years, so there was that too. Maybe that was why he couldn’t get up the nerve to talk to Benson about the feelings he’d developed for her over the last year or so.

Clearing his throat — which was significantly sorer than it had been that morning, but he’d been vaccinated against measles as a child, so he must have simply been nursing a cold, right? — he recalled some of his late night conversations with Benson — _come on, Mami, you at least got me my shots, didn’t you, I know that you protected me at least that much_ , he thought, his own internal voice tinged with snideness — his late night conversations with Benson where he could see through her, almost to the parts of her soul that hid her exhaustion at how often she’d loved someone only to have that someone heel-turn and leave her behind.

He didn’t always trust himself not to do that to her, especially now that she was so close to adopting Noah.

But goddamnit, his throat was burning, and was he imagining sores on the roof of his mouth or had some of Carisi’s measles anxiety rubbed off on him?

Beads of sweat tickled his chest. He unbuttoned three buttons on his shirt, then pulled his undershirt away from his body to see — no way, he thought, reaching for his phone and turning on the flashlight, no fucking way, not a full week after the high school kids had all recovered, after Noah had come home from the hospital — a rash spreading across his torso.

“Fuck,” he said, picking up the briefs he’d been working on and then throwing them back down on the desk, hard. “Fuck it if I let Trudy Malko get away with this.”

He called the hotline that had been set up for all of the NYPD and court employees who’d been unlucky enough to work the Tribeca Academy and Malko cases. An ambulette picked him up and took him to a special clinic at Bellevue Hospital, where he was diagnosed with measles.

The doctor warned him that he’d probably spike a very high fever within 24 hours, and that he should come back if his cough worsened. 

Barba asked her how he could have caught measles when he’d had the vaccine as a child. The doctor explained that, like a lot of people his age, he might have had the original shot when he was a baby but had never received a booster at age 4 or 5. 

When he got home, he texted Benson to tell her he’d caught measles on account of the swarm of Tribeca bees but was going to push through to find a way to turn all of the other parents against Trudy, to keep the appeal from changing New York State law for the worse, because no other kids were getting sick on his watch. This turned out to be a terrible idea, because she showed up in his lobby an hour later with ibuprofen and snacks, then at his apartment door with narrowed eyes and a “you’re not working tonight. Lucy’s staying over at my place. You’re about to spike a high fever, and I’m sure the doctor told you to call someone to have them stay with you, and I’m sure you didn’t listen.”

“Liv,” he said hoarsely, pressing his shoulder into the doorframe, “I’m working.”

“You’re burning up already.” She quickly replaced the hand she’d laid across his forehead with her lips. “Go to bed. I’ll look through your work and see if I can figure something out. Are you trying to flip the parents to your side? I do that all the time as a detective.”

Barba shook his head. “If this makes it past appeal —”

“If you die, you’re of no use to the case at all. Go to bed.”

Barba threw his hands up in front of him. He’d spent two decades honing his argumentation skills, and yet Benson always won. Always.

He was shivering, so she was — technically — right.

He grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen off his kitchen counter and palmed two pills.

“Don’t you dare take those dry,” she warned.

He rolled his eyes — a motion which pulled every other muscle in his body — and filled a glass of water from the tap. After swallowing the pills, he shuffled off to the bedroom.

Benson had only been examining the Malko appeal for ten minutes when she heard off-key singing coming from the bedroom.

One of the school safety officers who’d come down with measles had spiked a fever of 105. That was why doctors told adults to have someone stay with them until the fever broke. 

“I wonder where you are tonight, no answer on the telephone,” Barba sang, very seriously, “And the night goes by so very slow … oh, I hope that it won’t end, though … alone …” 

In his own mind, Barba must have thought he was belting out the lyrics with perfect tone and pitch to Heart’s rock ballad on unrequited love. 

Benson approached him cautiously, becoming even more cautious when she realized that beneath the comforter, he’d stripped down to boxer shorts and nothing more. 

“You don’t know how long I have wanted, to touch your lips and hold you tiiiiiight … you don’t know how long I have waited, and I was gonna tell you toniiiiiiight …” he continued, looking at her almost as if he was genuinely declaring his love. She wondered if his singing voice was this horrendous when he didn’t have measles and a high fever. 

Barba wailed out “But the secret is still my own …” in the key of H-flat.

“I’m going to get you a couple of cool compresses, and we’ll see if we can lower that fever faster. Where are your washcloths?” She looked at his face; his eyes and lips reflected utter confusion and exhaustion. “Never mind. I’ll find them myself. You owe me.”

She returned with three cool compresses, laying one across his forehead, and one at the spot where his neck met his left shoulder. The rash was starting to creep from his torso up his neck and down his arms, probably down his legs too, but she wasn’t about to peek under the comforter.

“Here,” she said, handing him the third compress, “put this under your arm.”

He lifted his arm and wiped it with the washcloth, shuddering at the cold sensation against his skin. Benson, meanwhile, shuddered at the uncanny intimacy of his bare arm, the hair beneath his underarm, the sweat dappling his chest.

Barba closed his eyes and then opened them again, looking up at Benson without really _looking_ at her. “The state senate’ll steamroll me,” he said. “After what I did to Alejandro? Please. I’ll never be appointed _el juez_. Lo siento, Abuelita, I should have just left it alone.”

Benson cringed. She didn’t want him to panic and raise his fever even more, so she sat beside him and held his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The state senators have not been kind to me, and that one DA who only looks out for the status quo says all I did was pave the way for another “25-year-old girl” to step in and take over city politics.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” Benson whispered.

“No, it’s not, but I deposed Alex Muñoz, so I’m never getting appointed to the bench. You know what everyone in the Bronx says about me now. You’ve heard it.”

_Rafa_ , Benson wanted to say, _I believe in you, I’m confident the state senate will approve your appointment even if they drag you over the coals a little first. You’ll be a state court judge, you’ll live out the dream you had for yourself, the one your grandmother knew would come true even when everyone else — even you — denied it. You’ll become a judge and then I’ll tell you how I feel about you because there won’t be a conflict of interest anymore._

But she didn’t want to confuse him. 

That would have confused the hell out of him for a few hundred reasons.

He dozed off again. She stayed with him, holding his hand, however inappropriate it was to their working relationship. 

She considered how they might get Mia Biel, whose 16-year-old daughter had contracted measles, to turn in Trudy, who’d orchestrated the fake vaccination records operation with their pediatrician fifteen years earlier. But if Mia’s own sick child wasn’t enough to convince her to turn on Trudy, if Savannah’s severe ear infection that had already led to pain and hearing loss wasn’t enough, then nothing was enough. 

Benson contemplated how angry Savannah might have been at her mother. 

She wondered if they could use that anger, if Savannah, a minor, could file civil suits against her mother, Trudy, and Dr. Setrakian. 

As soon as her adoption of Noah went through — family court willing — Benson planned to file civil suits against Trudy and Dr. Setrakian too. 

But if the appeal went through, even if Trudy was tied up in civil court for a decade, New York State law could change in a way that endangered more kids in the same way Noah had been endangered. 

“Abuelita.” Barba was tugging on Benson’s sleeve now. “Abuelita, abuelita.” His voice sounded small and distant, its timbre unfamiliar to her ears. “Please.”

“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” she soothed awkwardly.

He used her arms to pull himself up, then threw his arms around her, clinging to her like a feverish sloth. He was sweating, she noted, especially down his back, and felt at least a bit cooler than he had half an hour earlier. 

Barba was crying. Sobbing, actually, into her chest as he clung to her. 

“Please let me stay with you,” he begged.

“Okay,” was all she could think to say as she pet his hair. She understood his pleading a little too much. He was letting her in to a part of himself that he would likely never let her in to if he was in good health. 

“I don’t want to,” he sobbed. “Please, please, _please_ let me stay here.” The last _please_ was painfully hoarse. He sounded like a terrified child.

“I love you,” she told him. 

Tears were running down her cheeks now too. 

She hated people who endangered children. 

_Hated_.

At her age, she’d learned not to temper that hate with context, with the sorts of explanations abusers relied on to keep themselves protected. 

“I love you,” she repeated, and he buried his face in her shoulder.

After a few minutes, he coughed, drew in a breath, and let go of her, resting his head back on the pillow and falling into a much calmer sleep. She picked up the washcloths that had fallen onto the bed and touched her lips to his forehead, then a hand to his chest. The fever was going down.

She placed her hand on his shoulder as he slept, whispering a third “I love you,” choking on the words while more tears settled on her face.

Back in the living room, she FaceTimed Noah to say goodnight and promised him she’d be back in the morning. 

She returned to her work. Barba’s work. Her and Barba’s work.

At 6:30, she woke up to the sound of the shower and a loud “What the —” from Barba.

“Rafa?” she called, leaping up towards the bathroom door. “Are you all right?”

“Um,” he said, and she could hear him breathing fast, but not coughing, which was something of a relief. “I can’t tell you … um, it’s not appropriate to our working relOHMYGOD SOMETHING IS VERY WRONG HERE.” 

“Is it your balls?”

She heard the shower stop. “Wh-what?” he said from behind the door.

“My detectives and I had to read all about every possible symptom of measles during our investigation. You should have read the handout they gave you at Bellevue. Can you pee?”

“Yes.” 

“Is there any blood?”

“No.”

“Then ice them. Carefully. Follow up with a urologist when you’re better.”

“You’re very blunt, Dr. Benson.”

“I read the handout from Bellevue, unlike _some_ star prosecutors.”

Barba emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. He was shivering.

“I took a cool shower to help with the fever, and —”

She smacked his arm. “You’re supposed to take a lukewarm shower and then immediately put on a robe. Shivering can raise your temperature.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Because there’s another toddler at home who I take care of.”

Barba rolled his eyes, immediately closing them afterwards. “My throat is burning, I can’t shave because of the rash on my face, and it hurts to roll my eyes.”

“My asthmatic son was in PICU for three days with pneumonia.”

He pulled a Harvard T-shirt over his head, then flashed her a sympathetic look. “Go home,” he said. “I’ll call someone if the cough gets worse, I promise. Go home and hug Noah.”

“I’m worried,” she admitted, looking down at her feet. By worried, she meant _terrified_ , not just because of what had happened when Noah caught measles, but on account of Johnny D and the chance that the adoption wouldn’t go through because Noah had a living biological parent.

“Hey,” he said, dipping his head to catch her gaze, “I told you, given the circumstances of his birth, you cannot be expected to know who Noah’s biological father is.”

“I don’t know.”

“Right,” he said, “you don’t know who Noah’s biological father is.”

“But —”

“Don’t say it.”

“We’ll leave it alone for now. But I don’t know what’ll happen if Judge Linden finds out —”

“Hypothetically, there’s nothing for her to find out. Now, excuse me while I put pants on, unless you really want to see my terrifyingly massive —”

She smacked his arm again. “You’d better become a judge soon, so we can talk about your balls without accusations of impropriety.” She cringed as soon as she left the bedroom, embarrassed by the loadedness of what she’d said.

When he returned to the living room, waddling almost comically in a pair of blue gym shorts, she offered him a sad smile. 

“I vaguely remember talking to my late grandmother last night about why I’ll never be appointed to the bench.” He was smiling a bit, too, but his voice remained painfully hoarse. “I’m sorry I laid all that on you.”

“Rafa, it’s fine. Rest, okay? I’ll come back around 7. I’ll bring you dinner.”

“I don’t need you to take care of me.” 

“I need you in good health to make sure Trudy’s appeal doesn’t go through. Savannah Biel is 16. I’ll throw all the resources SVU has for emancipated minors in your direction if you can get her testimony, if you can use her to show that these parents were never acting in their children’s best interest.”

“That’s — that’s good,” Barba said, his exhausted eyes lighting up. “That’s very good.”

“Rest, though. Please.”

“I will. I’ll rest while I work. And when you come back, can we, uh, talk about —”

“Yes,” she said immediately.

“I’m sorry I was —”

“You had a high fever.”

“Yes, but I overstepped a lot of —”

“Go ice your balls, Barba. See you later.”

—

He vaguely remembered crying in his grandmother’s arms, thinking he was a little boy about to be sent home again, and he even more vaguely remembered Benson’s voice assuring him she loved him.

He’d crossed a line, maybe, a line that could open up a thousand prosecutorial misconduct accusations. At least, he thought, smirking down at his coffee table, it was a line his own boss had pole vaulted over four or five times, so his dismissal wouldn’t be immediate.

What was he taking about? His “relationship” with Benson was still located well on the side of fantasy, and he couldn’t muster much fantasy with a measles rash _everywhere_ and swelling requiring him to sit directly on top of a bag of frozen peas. 

Benson came over at 7 with a box full of rolled-up white bags emitting a delicious garlicky smell. He was glad that his appetite had returned. “Best old school red sauce joint in South Brooklyn,” she said, setting the box down on the kitchen table.

“You went that far out of your way?”

“Carisi did. He feels guilty.”

“Why?”

Benson shrugged. “That you caught measles and he didn’t.”

“They said most people born in New York after ’79 are fine.”

“You know Carisi.”

“Should I see if I have a nice red wine in the cabinet?”

“You’ve been taking ibuprofen every four hours. You can’t drink.”

“You can.”

“I won’t drink if you can’t.”

Barba set out plates and silverware while Benson unpacked the food. He was relieved to discover that he could enjoy spaghetti despite his still-aching throat. (The eggplant parmigiana was still a bit too much work.) He could almost taste the food now, too. 

“So,” Barba said, “I’d love to get Savannah Biel’s testimony on record in court, but it’s ethically iffy, because she’s going to need hearing aids and emancipating her cuts her off from her mother’s health insurance.”

Benson stabbed at her eggplant. “Mia’s used her own parents’ money to keep Savannah’s father out of their lives for the past ten years. The father’s sued multiple times to get Savannah vaccinated, always fails, and then Mia’s lawyers burden him with lawsuits to try to teach him never to go up against Mia again.”

“The courts’ definition of “best interest of the child” is very, very narrow,” he said.

“Don’t I know it.”

He reached out to touch her arm. “You and Noah will be fine,” he assured her.

She squeezed his hand. “So will you.”

“I really am sorry if I —”

“Stop. You thought you were a little boy again. I understand better than you know.”

“Liv,” he said, offering her an empathetic stare that, after a few seconds, transformed into a wince.

“You need a new package of frozen vegetables?” she asked.

“The peas are losing their kick.”

“I can get you reusable cold packs from the pharmacy.”

“I have one. It doesn’t … mold correctly.”

She laughed. “Poor baby.”

“There’s an application for a judicial appointment on my desk,” he said. “Couldn’t get up the courage to send it in.”

“You, the man who asked a defendant to choke you with his belt in open court, couldn’t get up the courage to send in a job application?”

“That was a stunt. A very good stunt, a very clever stunt, but a stunt. This is me going before a state senate that thinks I stuck my big prosecutorial nose into a political matter where it didn’t belong and screwed the city over for at least another thirty years.”

“Muñoz was corrupt,” Benson reminded him. “Whoever he was when you were children, that wasn’t who he was as an adult. This wasn’t about where he put his dick. This was about who he gave government jobs to. And, if he was the type who’d text a fifteen-year-old —”

“I know, I know, I know,” Barba said, swallowing hard and waving a hand in front of his face. “I don’t need reminders, and I don’t need reassurance. But I don’t need to be knocked down by state senators either.”

“Rafa,” she said, leaving her fork on her plate so she could lean in close enough to touch his face, to run her thumb across the stubble that was already gathering into a full beard, “if you get knocked down, I’ll be here to catch you, like you’ve been here for me.”

He shook his head. “I’ve never — I was the one who let Lewis —”

“Do not say that. No one except him is to blame. You fought tooth and nail for his victims. You fought for me.”

He closed his eyes. 

“And if your appointment isn’t approved, you can apply to be a state or federal prosecutor,” she said.

“You want me out of the DA’s office?” 

“I want you with me, but if we got together and disclosed, all the cases we’ve worked together over the last three years would be called into question. And if we didn’t disclose but were found out, it’d be worse.”

“You’ve been thinking about this too.”

“I like the sound of that _too_ ,” she said, leaning in to kiss his lips.

“Was that because I’m a pathetic old man covered in measles?”

“It’s because you’re my best friend covered in measles.”

He smiled against her lips. “But,” he said, “we need to wait until I’m out of the DA’s office, because we both can’t disclose and can’t not disclose.”

“Also we need to wait because your balls are swollen,” she whispered, which sent him into peals of laughter so fierce that he indeed did need to immediately replace the thawing bag of peas he’d been sitting on.

—

Amaro was out of laparoscopic surgery, the first surgeon said, but the team still needed to repair his knee. Benson walked down the hallway of the surgical unit at Bellevue and was momentarily surprised to find Barba, still in the suit he’d worn to court that morning — sans jacket and tie — walking towards the exit from the other end of the hall. 

She realized he was there for Judge Barth, and embraced him tightly as soon as they met at the exit.

“Elana made it through,” he said in a whisper, not breaking the embrace for a second. “How’s Amaro?”

“Still in surgery, but all his internal organs are intact. He’s going to be okay.”

“And Noah?’ Barba asked. “Is Noah going to be okay?”

Benson nodded. “I spoke to Langan an hour ago. The adoption is still on track, regardless of what happened in the courtroom this morning.”

“Thank God,” Barba said, drawing her even closer, “thank God.” He sucked in a breath through his nose. “Let’s talk outside for a minute?”

“Sure.” She followed him down a flight of stairs and out through the hospital’s main lobby.

“I have a hearing in front of the state senate next week,” he told her. “There’s a bench that was just vacated by a retiring family court judge in Nassau County, and when the governor saw an SVU prosecutor had applied for a judicial appointment, he thought I’d be a good fit. Which is —”

“Wonderful,” Benson said.

“We’ve had a long day.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ve also applied for state and federal positions. That’s my best bet. Our best bet.”

“You don’t think the state senate will —”

“No. But we’ll make this work. Life is shorter than we think it is. We saw that today — we almost saw that today — in court. We’ll make this work. I’ll see you after I embarrass myself up in Albany.”

“Rafa,” she said, “Rafa, honey, I believe in you.”

“That and two dollars will buy you an empanada from the cart over there,” he said, pursing his lips into a thin smile. He looked up wistfully, then grabbed her hand and drew it to his heart. “You believing in me means the world,” he corrected. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it gently.

—

When they had a dinner party at Benson’s apartment two weeks later to celebrate Noah’s adoption, Benson assumed that Barba had either received bad news or no news at all in Albany, since he didn’t broach the topic, even when they were in the kitchen by themselves while Noah slept in his new toddler bed, after the other guests had left. Barba loaded the dishwasher in silence as Benson put the last of the leftovers in the fridge.

He closed the dishwasher and pressed the button to start it running, then closed the space between him and Benson, holding her face in his hands as he kissed her, long and slow and sweet.

“What’s that for?” she asked, smiling.

“For passing the lieutenant’s exam with flying colors. For making Noah your family, and for making yourself his family. For —”

“Did you get the appointment?” she asked, throwing her arms around him.

“Yes.” He lowered his hands to her hips and swayed gently in rhythm to the sounds of the air conditioner. 

“I never doubted it for a minute.”

He raised one eyebrow.

“Not for a minute,” she repeated.

“I love you,” he said, leading her into the living room and continuing to sway his hips and move his feet.

“I love you,” she echoed. “And, wow, you are much better at dancing than you are at singing.”

“Singing?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, abuelita always told me I’d be known for my argumentation skills rather than my singing, and that my singing voice could bring the dead back to life in the worst way possible, but —”

“You serenaded me when you were sick.”

“Oh. Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It was sweet.” She kissed his lips. “Pathetic, but sweet.”

He laughed with her.

“And I still love you,” she added, “in spite of the fact that you couldn’t sing your way out of a ditch.” With their foreheads pressed together, they danced around the coffee table. “You’re a good man, Rafael Barba, I’m not kidding.”

“I wouldn’t say —”

“Shh.” Another kiss. “How’re you feeling?”

“Much better.”

“Everywhere?”

He grinned. “Everywhere,” he said, tilting his head so his lips were on her neck. 

“Let’s continue this discussion in a different venue, Your Honor,” she said, leading him to the bedroom. She paused at the foot of the bed, when she noticed him smirking up at her. “What?” she prompted. 

“You’ve made my dreams come true, Olivia Benson.”


End file.
